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I have a few users who recently switched to Windows 11 asking why attachments from outlook won't open on their desktop apps, only as a file preview in Outlook. My users are trying to move through a lot of communications at once, so needing to manually save and reopen the files on their desktop apps is clunky and adding inefficiency their work. The files they need to open also need to be manipulated, so leaving them in Outlook preview won't cut it (approvals, highlights, etc.). Short of reverting my users back to Windows 10, I have not found any other question thread or app setting that works to adjust this.
On Windows 10, double left-clicking an attachment in Outlook pops the "Opening Mail Attachment" window then allows me to open in my default viewer (e.g. a .pdf file will open in Adobe on click for me); in Windows 11, "open" and "always ask before opening this type of file" not selectable (grayed out). I can "save" the documents to my desktop then open them in the default viewer in Windows 11, but not open on click as before. Sorry for not having screen shots - pictures were not loading.
To my knowledge, here were no changes besides updating to Windows 11 (no policy change, no settings change, trust center is the same, etc.).
Outlooks performance with attachments on Windows 10 is much more intuitive and useful to us. What do I need to change to allow users updating to Windows 11 the same performance, or what could be causing this feature of Outlook to not work the same on Windows 11?
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Adding to the cries of others here. I tried to send a client an invoice and they said they can't open it on their computer. I met up with them in person and their outlook refuses to let them download or even open a simple pdf, jpg, whatever. This is beyond absurd! Does Microsoft expect us to send people .docx files to invoice them?! What if this client was across the country? Why am I running IT just to get paid!? This is unbillable time here!
Adding to the list of people wanting a resolution for this. This functionality is missing and I do not understand why this was not addressed already. This is only frustrating users and not providing them with the functionality to manage their emails efficiently.
Adding to the list of frustrated users. Our IT has forced users to change over. So now not only do attachments not open to second screens at max but emails no longer open at max either. What a load of trash !
Same issue. Please advise.
Eventually I had sync issues of sending and receiving emails while using the new Outlook. I tried going into the help menu and clicking the button about going back to the old outlook version, but it did not work. An IT guy who works for my company was trying to fix my sync issues and I told him that it won't let me go back to the old version. He corrected me and said, go to the search bar on windows home screen and search for Outlook. After we did the search, 2 versions of the app showed up and I opened the old version and it let me revert back to using that version, and life was good again.
I recommend doing this if you are frustrated and thought you couldn't go back to the old version that worked beautifully. Hopefully this helps some people out. Good luck
